The Altars Festival is a multi-cultural ancestor remembrance celebration with SAMASAMA and The Sustainable Culture Lab from October 31 to November 2, that centers around remembering our ancestors and loved ones.
Cultures from around the world have numerous ancestor remembrance traditions, but America does not, particularly because American ethnocide does not want people of color to remember their past and retell their stories. For this festival, Black, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, and Indigenous artists create altars demonstrating their unique cultural experiences and our shared American identity, in order to create an inclusive and transformational moment of reflection.
By keeping alive the memory of those who came before us, we create a safe space to cope with the trauma of loss, sustain our generational stories, and strengthen our communities.
This fall, we invite you to create your own altar in a meaningful place in your home that reflects your generational truth and cultural identity. Please share it with us by tagging @samasamaart and @scl_community and using the hashtags #altarsfestival2020 #altaramerica.
The Artists
Charles Jean-Pierre
Charles Philippe Jean-Pierre’s is a Haitian American artist groomed on Chicago’s south side. His most tangible connections to his Haitian roots were the paintings and sculptures in his family’s home. He often overheard passionate debates on abuses of power and continual regression in Haiti, but the art that hung on their walls were beautiful contradictions to his homeland's hopeless narrative. The stark contradictions of beauty and power, as a theme, are ever-present as a theoretical and methodological struggle within Jean-Pierre’s overall body of work. His multimedia paintings speak to the nexus of political, social, and economic structures.
Erik Bruner-Yang
An agent of alternatives, Erik Bruner-Yang creates space. Through his Washington, D.C.-based concept development company, Foreign National, he offers an alternative: food and space as commons. There exists a constant dialogue of community, culture, and progress. His restaurants include Maketto, ABC Pony, Brothers and Sisters, Spoken English/Cafe Spoken, COIN BBQ, and COIN Mezze. In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, with thousands of restaurants closing and significant unemployment, Erik Bruner-Yang created the Power of 10 Initiative in order to help fund local restaurants and feed communities impacted by COVID-19, which has funded over 40 restaurants in 8 cities and made over 200,000 meals.
Almas Haider
Almas Haider, is a storyteller whose current work offers liberatory interpretations of Islamic texts and rituals. Through creative acts, she seeks to visiblize, honor, and ancestralize women, queer, and gender expansive beings, often using speculative fiction as a grounding mechanism. In addition to her artistic practice, Almas is an activist supporting the existence and just alignment of South Asian and queer and trans Muslim collectives in the fight for BlPOC liberation. She recently returned to academia to reclaim ancestral design technologies via a Master’s in Architecture.
